


Michigan Left

by chasinghappiness



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: 2006-era, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-25 23:22:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20034034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chasinghappiness/pseuds/chasinghappiness
Summary: The first time Scott comes across a Michigan Left, he freezes, one of the very few moments in his life where he is completely unsure as to what he should do.





	Michigan Left

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by stupid road laws in michigan. not too sure what this is, but i liked the comparison of vm to a good ol' michigan left.

The first time Scott comes across a Michigan Left, he freezes, one of the very few moments in his life where he is completely unsure as to what he should do. 

“What the fuck?” he says, tone sharp with the curse, something he’s been doing more and more, feeling ample freedom lately. “What’s this?”

Tessa hums beside him and looks around, her eyes squinting against the bright sun filtering through the car windows. “I’m not sure,” she says, her voice so much softer than his own. “Look at the green sign.” Her finger points up, and when he follows the imaginary line she creates in the air, Scott finds a sign with two white arrows. One is pointing to the right, the other follows perpendicular until it veers off to the left in a curve. He notices that they stay aligned after that, just travelling in opposite directions. 

“So I can’t turn left?” he clarifies. The red light stares at them. 

“I don’t think so,” she tells him. When he looks over, he sees her lips pursed in thought. “I think you turn right and then go into that left hand lane, the one that curves, and then merge into traffic going East.”

Tessa’s always been good at directions, much better than him, anyways. As if he knows which way is East and which way is West. She’s always been better than him at a lot of things.

“Okay,” he says, despite the confusion he feels. “I guess I’ll do that.”

With the flick of his signal and an unexplained annoyed feeling in his gut, Scott turns right and skips three lanes over to the far left, just like Tessa told him to. There’s only one car horn that blares at them. He sits impatiently in the curve, waiting to merge into the cars who are, apparently, headed East. Which is the same direction the furniture store is in. 

“My mom told me that it’s called a Michigan Left,” Tessa says once they finally are on the right (or should he say left?) side of the road, signs for fast food restaurants and strip malls flying by. “Apparently too many people were getting hit while taking left turns so they implemented this instead.”

“It’s stupid,” Scott grumbles.

He can see Tessa roll her eyes and then sit up straighter as they pull into the plaza where there is a high end furniture store, one that she begged Scott to take her to exactly half an hour after they won Junior Worlds. Tessa’s already got one foot out the door before he can turn the car off, her whole body jittery with energy. It’s quite fantastic watching her become so excited over a couple couches.

“What do you think?” she asks, plopping down on the first one they see.

Scott snorts. “You, Tessa Virtue, are going to buy a fuzzy hot pink couch?”

She turns her head to look at the cushions, left then right then left again. He watches the way her fingers thread in and out of the material. It’s almost like he can feel the couch himself. Scott has touched Tessa’s hand so many times that sometimes he wonders if they have fused nerves together. What she feels, he feels, and vice versa. It’s crazy but so is them being the first Canadian dance team to win Junior Worlds, so. Anything is possible, he guesses. 

“You’re right,” Tessa finally says, standing up with a sigh and moving onto another couch set. This time it’s pure white, almost transparent, he thinks. “This one,” she says while sinking down into the cushions. She hums low, her eyes shutting. “Yes, this is it.”

Scott cocks his head, investigating the couch further. “Don’t you think it’s a bit… white?”

“Nope.” Her eyes stay shut, the serene expression not leaving her face. “It’s perfect.”

He doesn’t argue with her. That’s something he has tried before; fighting her mind that is already set on something, and it never has ended well. Tessa is like a boulder that won’t budge. At times it’s a helpful character trait; in training, in competition. At others it can be a nuisance, especially for Scott, who is quite passionate about getting his way. 

They load the couch into his tiny car with a lot of sweating and grunting from the pair of them. He brings it back to Tessa’s house, taking that stupid Michigan Left once again, and helps her assemble the thing. After some griping from both of them, Scott throwing the instruction manual to the side and Tessa chasing after it, they are sat on the couch together, out of breath and chugging water from the same bottle that they pass back and forth. 

“Are you satisfied?” Scott asks her after a particularly long gulp, coughing on the water and wiping his face with the back of his hand. 

“With the couch? Yes.” She sighs and turns her head to face him. Her neck is resting on the back of the couch, her eyes drooping with exhaustion. Without thinking, he reaches out to push a strand of hair from her face. The deep hum in her throat is enough for him to understand her appreciation. “With our life?” Tessa pauses and Scott feels like he’s been jerked around. That’s not where he thought this conversation was going. “I’m not sure.”

Scott sits up at that answer, his legs coming up to sit criss-cross on the couch, fully facing her now. “What do you mean?”

Tessa turns her head, her eyes wandering up to stare at the ceiling. There’s a mark up there, a brown spot from when Scott accidentally shook a bottle of Coke before opening it and spraying it everywhere. Tessa had glared at him for at least a week after that. He wants nothing more than for her to stop looking at the mark and instead focus her gaze on him. 

“There’s a lot of pressure, you know?” she starts. Today she has chosen to wear denim shorts, and when she sits down they ride up, exposing the creamy skin of her legs. Scott is thankful for that when he can reach out and place his hand on her thigh. He’s not sure why it still surprises him, but he flinches when he touches her skin and feels how cold she is, wraps his hand tighter around her leg like the warmth from his palm will somehow help. “I feel like… I feel like we’re being set up for failure.”

“How so?” Scott feels like they shouldn’t be having this conversation on Tessa’s brand new, too-white couch. Rather, they should be on a leather sofa, in a room surrounded by framed degrees and messages of affirmation, a counsellor in front of them guiding their words. So they don’t get hurt, he tells himself. 

Tessa sighs, a long exhale deflating her whole body. “People have expected greatness our whole lives. What if…” she pauses, turns her head to look at him, and he sharply inhales at the sight of her piercing eyes, wet with unshed tears. “What if we let down everyone we know and love. I mean, come on, Scott. Our families have spent how many hours on us. They shipped us off to a different country, pooled together their entire savings to help us reach our dreams.”

“And we’re doing that, Tess,” he reassures her, squeezing her thigh and inching just a tad bit closer. The fabric of the couch is smooth on his own bare calves. “It’s not like we aren’t trying.”

“I know,” she says with a groan. “I don’t know how to explain what I’m thinking.”

Scott reaches forward and grabs her chin, turning her face towards him. His thumb is just below her bottom lip, and just for a second he thinks about shifting it higher, dipping it inside of her mouth. That thought quickly gets pushed aside, but only after she darts her tongue out to wet her lips. “Tess,” he says her name sharply. “It’s just me. You know you can tell me anything, yeah?”

“Yeah,” she whispers. Her eyes look down, avoiding his own. “Do you ever think we are like a Michigan Left?”

He blinks. “We are like a… what? Tess, are you seriously comparing us to a shitty traffic law?”

“No, think about it!” She sits up and turns her body towards his, causing his hand to drop onto the small couch space between them. Her hands stay busy, picking at a thread on her cut-off shorts. It’s quite distracting. “We both wanted to turn left, right? I wanted to be a dancer, you wanted to be a hockey player. Two different paths. But in order to turn left, we had to go right first; we had to skate together, that was our right turn. And, well, ever since then we’ve been perpendicular, travelling down the same path. But…” she hesitates and he knows she doesn’t want to say the next part. Scott’s not sure he wants to hear it either. Everything inside of him is screaming  _ she’s wrong, she’s wrong!  _ “We both wanted to turn left, at some point, yeah? Are we just… are we just waiting until one of us finally takes the left turn?”

There’s only one thing he can think to say. “No.” He grabs her hand, maybe too harsh but he wants to get the point across; he’s not going anywhere. “I’m here, Tess, with you, for however long it lasts. We’re going into seniors and we’re going to go to Vancouver and--and--well, I don’t know what’s going to happen there, or before or after then, but I’m not waiting for any left turn. I’m quite happy going straight; with you.”

Tessa smiles, one that makes his insides squirm and his cheeks feel warmer than they did before. “Good,” she says, softly, like she doesn’t want to disrupt the air around them. “I’m not waiting to turn left, either.”


End file.
